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  • Find Work
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Find Work

Rhina P. Espaillat

I tie my Hat—I crease my Shawl—
Life’s little duties do—precisely
As the very least
Were infinite—to me—
—Emily Dickinson, #443

My mother’s mother, widowed very young
of her first love, and of that love’s first fruit,
moved through her father’s farm, her country tongue
and country heart anaesthetised and mute
with labour. So her kind taught her to do—
“Find work,” — she would reply to every grief—
and her one dictum, whether false or true,
tolled heavy with her passionate belief.
Widowed again, with children, in her prime,
she spoke so little it was hard to bear
so much composure, such a truce with time
spent in the lifelong practice of despair.
But I recall her floors, scrubbed white as bone,
her dishes, and how painfully they shone.


Rhina P. Espaillat

from Her Place in These Designs (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2008)

 

Reproduced by kind permission of the author.

Tags:

families grandparents pride sonnets trauma work

About this poem

This poem, representing the Dominican Republic, is part of The Written World – our collaboration with BBC radio to broadcast a poem from every single nation competing in London 2012.

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